Diabetic Eye Disease: Overview (Nursing)

00:01 Okay well next we're going to talk with Mr. Sanchez about his vision.

00:06 Now I want you to look at this probably goes without saying that high glucose can lead to vision impairment.

00:11 But yeah, we'll get to that.

00:13 Look at this picture of the eye.

00:16 This was drawn for you to kind of get the feel for what does a healthy eye look like.

00:24 Now the most important part the part that gets most infected with diabetes is the blood supply.

00:31 So I want you to make sure you write in there, diabetes damages blood supply.

00:37 We introduced that member that's why it's such an important concept but diabetes damages blood supply.

00:43 Not in this eye, everything is beautiful and I love this drawing created by the artist.

00:50 But let's talk about Mr. Sanchez, what we need to talk to him about when it comes to his eyes.

00:56 Ask him about his vision, hey, Mr. Sanchez.

00:58 Have you noticed any changes in your vision? Now if you're talking to my father, he'd say, nope, I'm fine.

01:05 But if you ask him specific questions because based on what I've studied what I know about eye changes in diabetic patients.

01:12 I would say more specifically do things ever look blurry to you, more blurry than normal.

01:19 Huh? Have you noticed any spots in front of your eyes? You could always ask him, If you notice that there's empty spots in your vision.

01:28 Now he's going to think, so he wants to give you that information.

01:33 He just doesn't know how to articulate it.

01:35 That's your job and my job, see we are professionals at knowing what cues to look for but we understand that Mr. Sanchez isn't a healthcare professional.

01:47 So our job is to draw it out of them.

01:50 If you think about it like a puzzle, It's really a lot of fun.

01:54 So I've got four really nasty eye diseases listed for you there.

01:59 Diabetic retinopathy, diabetic macular edema, glaucoma and cataracts.

02:06 So you got our healthy eye on the left, this is just an example of an unhealthy eye before we break these down and we're going to like this is going to be so fun because I'm going to explain to you briefly what these eye diseases are and then I'm going to show you what it would look like if your eyes had that disease.

02:23 I'm going to love this part. Okay.

02:25 So healthy eye on the left, damaged eye on the right.

02:30 That those blood vessels are swollen, their tortured, you can understand why these eye diseases cause problems with your vision because look the image is supposed to come in through that lens in the front and hit the back of the eye.

02:44 You have a lot of problems in between there, but let's take a look at that in detail.

02:49 So you've got a healthy retina, remember high glucose, high blood sugars, damaged blood vessels over time, even if a patient is in pre-diabetes.

02:59 Remember pre-diabetes, their blood sugar's a little bit higher than normal, but it's not high enough to be diagnosed as diabetic.

03:07 But this damage can be going on all over their body and in their eyes and pre-diabetes.

03:13 So these damaged vessels start to leak fluid and then they cause swelling.

03:18 Edema is never good for the tissue around it.

03:21 So then these abnormal vessels grow.

03:24 Well, remember when vessels regrow, they don't come back as efficient as they normally would and these abnormal vessels they can bleed right into the eye then they cause scarring, or abnormally high pressures.

03:39 That's why that unhealthy eye looks so much different than the healthy eye.